Vatican studying Bitcoin in a effort to stop slave trade

Despite Bitcoin’s hockey-stick price chart over the last week, hitting $7,500 level, still, the general perception of the digital currency is that it can be largely used for illegal purposes like drug and human trafficking, terrorist financing and others.

Now, Vatican City is working with major financial institutions to better understand the use of crypto in human trafficking and ultimately explore ways to stop the illicit activity.

While the technology behind bitcoin, blockchain, has disrupted a series of industries, products and sectors, the doubt that cryptocurrencies are currently use for illegal activities is one of the major concerns for governments around the world. Since cryptos are not regulated, the cost of legitimizing digital currencies can come at a huge cost for humanity.

This is one of the concerns of Pope Francis and Vatican City. Cryptovest just reported that “the Bank of Montreal is meeting with Vatican leaders at the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences (PASS) in the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church.” Since Pope Francis was named the leader of the Roman Catholic Church in 2013, he has made it a mission to eradicate slavery, a top priority of the church, helping inspire the recent PASS efforts, according to an internal document provided to CoinDesk.

Pope Francis’ stand on human trafficking and slavery is a very outspoken one, with the intention of ending all such activities by the year of 2020. Now, with the power of cryptos and blockchain, that mission may be much easier and faster to accomplish.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with CoinDesk, Bank of Montreal senior manager Joseph Mari detailed the purpose of his particular address, and the potential bigger picture role it could play in fighting against what the International Labour Organization estimates is a $150 billion forced labor industry.

Mari is scheduled to present the most recent results of Project Protect, founded two years ago to teach AML officers how to identify patterns in their own transactions that might be evidence of human trafficking, and identifying an increase in the use of cryptocurrencies by slave traders.

The major parts of the world where human trafficking takes place are Eastern Europe, Canada, and others. According to Bank of Montreal, the knowledge about cryptos can be quite beneficial in targeting criminal activity and eventually ceasing it. 

This hugely important and impactful action from Pope Francis and Vatican tells about the urgency to rise our efforts to eradicate Human Slavery as fundamentally evil, but extremely profitable practice for organized criminal groups around the world, as soon as possible, even with the assistance of this nascent Blockchain Technology.